


The Grandma War

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: AU, Dueling Grandmas, F/M, Fake Dating, Old Ladies Give No Fucks, Or Is It?, diner food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 15:21:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11316156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: Charlotte Snow and Luna Aguilar hated each other on sight, and their respective grandkids are tired of hearing about it. Is it possible for Caitlin and Cisco to make their grandmas get along?





	The Grandma War

 "I’m telling you, honey, she’s a scourge.“

"You mentioned that, Grandma,” Caitlin Snow said patiently, matching her pace to her grandmother’s as they walked in the front doors. “A few times now.”

Her grandmother sniffed. “Well, she is.”

“Okay,” Caitlin said, smiling at the attendant at the front desk as she signed them in.

“You have a tiff with Luna, Charlotte?” the attendant asked. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Tiff was putting it mildly. From the sounds of it, Charlotte Snow had loathed her roommate from the moment they’d met the week before, and the sentiment was returned with equal if not greater fervor.

Caitlin had gotten an earful about Luna Aguilar from the day her grandma had been transferred to the rehab home from the hospital. She was just waiting to get called to either the police station or the morgue, because one of them had killed the other.

Charlotte grumbled about Luna all the way up the elevator. As they stepped into the hall on her floor, Caitlin asked, “Can’t you at least _try_ to get along with her? You two are both going to be here for months, recovering.”

“I’m not the one who started it, darling.”

Caitlin sighed. “She’s an old lady with a broken hip, Grandma, and the worst thing she’s ever actually done is get the bed by the window.”

“She’s a demon.”

Caitlin dropped it, since they were getting close to the room and she didn’t want Luna to overhear. Not that her grandma ever had such qualms herself - and neither did her roommate. Caitlin sighed to herself, wondering how two women with a combined one hundred and sixty-eight years on the planet still managed to act like squabbling children.

“Hey there, Mrs. S,” someone said as they worked their way into the room. It was a young man sitting on the end of the bed up against the window. He had Luna’s golden skin, and shiny black hair that fell in waves to his broad shoulders. He glanced at her, interest in his dark eyes, and gave her a quick, bright smile like a burst of sunlight. She smiled tentatively back.

“Good afternoon, Cisco,” Charlotte said. She narrowed her eyes at the woman in the other bed. “Luna.”

“Charlotte,” the other woman said coldly.

“Hi, Mrs. Aguilar,” Caitlin said politely. “How’s your hip today?”

“Hello, Caitlin. It’s better. How are you, mija?”

“I’m fine, thanks for asking.”

There was a little pause, while Caitlin looked in between her grandmother, Mrs. Aguilar, and the young man - Cisco. He seemed to be doing the same thing.

“Well,” he said, hopping to his feet, clearly having come to the conclusion that they had to be in charge of their own introduction.  "Hi. I’m Cisco Ramon.“ He held out his hand. "I’m Luna’s grandson.”

“Caitlin Snow,” she said, shaking it. His hand was warm and firm around hers. “Charlotte’s granddaughter.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“You too.”

“You guys have a good day out?”

“Pretty good, and how was yours?”

“I owe Nana about seven thousand dollars,” he said cheerfully. “So a good day for her.”

“Were you playing bridge?”

“Hell, no, Texas Hold'em. And she cheats.”

“Surprise, surprise,” Charlotte muttered.

Caitlin hissed, “Grandma,” at her. It wasn’t like Charlotte didn’t cheat outrageously at gin rummy every chance she got.

“What was that?” Luna asked.

“Nothing,” both Caitlin and Cisco said at once.

Luna looked suspicious, but she started scooping the cards on her tray table back into their box without comment.

Caitlin narrowed her eyes at her grandmother, who looked innocent. “Time for my nap, I think,” the old lady sighed, settling into her bed.

Caitlin frowned at her, all her bad behavior forgotten. “Grandma! You should have told me you were getting tired. You can’t overextend yourself. You had a major heart attack not that long ago. Do you want to go home soon or not?”

“Darling, stop fussing.” Her grandma squeezed her hand. “I was doing perfectly fine. The day I overextend myself at minyan isn’t here yet. It just hit me all of a sudden.” She waved her hand airily. Who could fathom the mysteries of the aging body?

Caitlin sighed. Well, that could happen, especially since this was the first time she’d gone to temple since her heart attack, and they’d stayed a long time afterwards, talking with her grandma’s friends and sharing the gory details of the episode. She gave her grandma a hug. “Okay, I’ll get going and let you rest.”

Luna said clearly, “You’d better get going too, mijo, or _that one_ will say we’re keeping her up on purpose.”

Caitlin looked up and found Cisco’s eyes. His cheeks had reddened, and he grimaced an apology at her.

When her grandma said, “Well, if it’ll stop you from _talking_ all the time - ”

Caitlin flushed in her turn, and grimaced back.

“Yeah, I should go.” He muttered something in Spanish that Caitlin couldn’t understand, but she guessed meant something like “play nice.”

Luna replied something in Spanish that made Cisco rear back in shock.

“Nana! I’m gonna wash out your mouth with soap.” He gave her a kiss anyway. “Te quiero, okay? I’ll come see you in a few days.”

She patted his cheek fondly. “Te quiero, baby.”

Caitlin found herself sharing an elevator and walking out to the parking lot with Cisco, with all the awkward silence of two people who had just met. “Well,” he said, gesturing at a beat-up Honda in the parking lot, “Uh. So, this one’s me. Nice meeting you.”

“You too,” she said, and found herself blurting, “I’m so sorry about my grandmother.”

“Oh my god,” he said, whipping around to face her fully. “No. I’m sorry about mine. The way she’s acting, it’s not cool at all.”

“Does she complain about mine?”

“All the time. I’d show you the text convo but I don’t want you to hate us. Even though you probably already do.”

Caitlin rushed to reassure him. “I don’t hate you, or her. She’s always been very nice to me.”

“Well, you’re pretty nice to her, even though I’d totally get it if you weren’t.”

“She’s interesting! And she likes to talk about you.”

“Aw, shit,” he said, ears going red, a little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Did she show you baby pics?”

“As cute as that sounds, no. But she brags about you. She said you have a fancy degree and a fancy new job.”

“Well, your grandma definitely showed me baby pics, so you know. Fair warning there.”

Caitlin blushed, trying to remember if any of the snaps in the treasured family photo album her grandmother had insisted on bringing to the rehab home had been bathtub shots, or ones where she had spaghetti all over her face.

“Anyway, she’s pretty cool, your grandma," Cisco went on. "She actually found this Star Trek t-shirt for me and wanted to tell me all about the website where I could get it. I kind of didn’t have the heart to tell her I already had it.”

“You’re lucky she didn’t buy it for you.”

He laughed. “I thought she was gonna, for real.” Then he sighed. “No, but really. I don’t know why they hate each other so much.”

“At least they’re not trying to fix us up or something,” Caitlin said.

“Shyeah,” Cisco said. “Nana should know better by now. Every time I ever went on a date she fixed me up with, it was awful.”

A blast of cold wind whipped down the street, and Caitlin shivered.

“Whoa, look at me, keeping you out here in the cold griping about Grandma War ‘17,” Cisco said, fumbling for his keys. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” Caitlin said. Then, surprising herself, she blurted, “You know, maybe we should try to figure out what to do about it.”

He looked up, blinking. “About our grandmas?”

“Yeah. The stress of this constant feuding can’t be doing their recovery any good.” She looked around and spotted a diner on the corner, the kind that served their coffee in thick white ceramic cups with a blue stripe around the rim, and had never heard of a mocha latte. “Should we go get a cup of coffee or something?”

He let his hand fall from his car door. “Yeah, sure, I’d like that.”

* * *

The diner was bright and warm and smelled of fried food. They got a table by the window and ordered two cups of coffee.

“So how did this happen?” she asked, peeling open a little cup of half and half and dribbling it carefully into her cup. “Do you know?”

Cisco finished shaking three sugars into his cup, tossed the little paper packets onto the saucer, and turned his hands up to the sky. “Got me. The first I heard about it, your grandma was already Public Enemy Number One.”

“She’s not like this normally,” Caitlin said. “My grandma.”

“Neither is mine,” he assured her, reaching out to play with the wire holder full of jams and jellies. “When I found this place and I heard it was double-occupancy rooms, I figured, cool, cool, Nana’ll be lifelong cronies with her roomie in under ten minutes. This whole thing is way out of character.”

“Right! Right. The only thing I could ever get out of Grandma was that yours got there first and grabbed the bed by the window.”

He snorted. He’d started stacking the jelly packets up into a pyramid. “Well, yeah, it is a sweet spot, what with its gorgeous vista of the parking lot and everything.”

She sipped her coffee. “Of course, who wouldn’t want to wake up to that? But it’s such a silly reason for a feud, especially with someone you’re sharing living space with.”

He set the last jelly packet on top of his structure, considered it, then started pulling it down and making it three-sided. “It doesn’t make sense, but you know, I figure it’s like true love.”

She made an incredulous face. “I don’t think this is anything like true love.”

“No, but it is,” he said. “You meet that one person, the person you’re gonna loathe and despise all your life, and you just know, right? Your nemesis.”

“But which one is Lex Luthor and which one is Superman?”

He grinned at her. “Hard to say, but A-plus reference.”

She blushed and smiled back.

“No, but seriously. I’m tired of hearing about this. You think we can request, like, a roomie swap?”

“I’ve suggested that. Grandma refused. Something about, then _she_ would win.”

“They do have single rooms.”

“All full,” Caitlin said. “And even if one does open up, Medicare won’t cover the extra cost, and I’m not so sure I could afford it.”

“Aren’t you, like, a fancy doctor? That’s what your grandma says when she’s bragging on you.”

“With fancy medical school loans,” she said. “I’m going to be in massive debt until I’m eighty.”

“I hear that,” he said, and held out his fist over the table. After a moment, she realized she was supposed to bump it, and did. He laughed gently at her. “I got loans out the wazoo myself, so I couldn’t swing the extra either,” he admitted. “And I’m pretty sure Nana would eat nails before she asked for a roommate swap.”

“So here we are.”

“Yep,” he said, drinking his coffee. “Here we are.”

* * *

As a first attempt, they agreed to visit their respective grandmothers more often, in hopes that most of the squabbling was due to boredom.

“Just as long as we don’t exhaust them,” Caitlin fretted. “They’ve both had major health issues. The last thing we want is to set their recovery back.”

“It’ll be cool! I’ll play poker with her, lose like half a dozen shirts. She’ll teach me all the old songs I never had time to learn when I was in school. I’ll take her to lunch on the weekends and she’ll bitch about how people can’t cook anymore and eat everything on her plate. She’ll have a blast, trust me.”

He worked for an engineering firm, a 9-5 job, so his visits were pretty regular. Caitlin’s schedule at the hospital was far more variable, but when she could, she tried to time her visits with his - just so her grandma wasn’t sitting alone in the room while Cisco and Luna were out, she told herself, or listening to them have fun.

Still, whenever she saw his beat-up Honda sitting in the parking lot, with its bi pride sticker and the Rebel Alliance decal in the back window, she walked in with a little more spring in her step, a smile ready to answer his when he looked up.

After their visits, they fell in the habit of walking together to the diner on the corner and getting a cup of coffee as they tried to figure out how to make two stubborn, prickly old ladies get along. They’d worn themselves out on apologies within a couple of weeks, or had started taking them as given, because they both just sighed and made faces at each other in their grandmas’ room, and said things like, “I can’t believe she said that!” afterwards.

The day Cisco spent an hour and a half patiently teaching Charlotte about her new phone, Caitlin was impressed and told him so. He shrugged. “It’s just tech, you know? She’ll be texting you selfies in no time.”

Caitlin doubted that, but even so, knowing her grandmother had an up to date phone with all her health information on it made her feel better. “Did you teach your grandma?”

He laughed and shook his head. “Man, Nana was texting all her comadres when I was still a kid. That’s how I knew something was up the day she fell and broke her hip, because she hadn’t texted me all day. And her selfie game is on point.”

“Grandma refuses to take selfies,” Caitlin said. “She says they’re vain and nobody wants to see an old lady’s wrinkles.”

“Nana says she earned those and anybody who doesn’t want to see her can look away.”

Caitlin thought about that. “I think I like that attitude.”

* * *

The day Caitlin had skipped lunch and her stomach growled audibly as they walked into the diner, Cisco insisted on getting a giant basket of fries for them to split with their coffee. He watched with scrunched-up face as she dipped them in mayonnaise. “Okay. That’s - I try not to harsh on folks and their tastes, but that’s just wrong.”

“Don’t knock it 'til you’ve tried it,” she said.

He reached over, stuck his fry in her cup of mayo, and bit the end off. He chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and said, “Yep. Still wrong.” He swirled the half a fry in ketchup as she giggled.

After that, fries became part of the routine, and then Caitlin found herself ordering dinner more often than not as their conversations roamed beyond the grandma war and on to the rest of their lives.

She told him stories from the hospital, censoring the more disgusting ones until he said, “Don’t hold back on my account. I have a strong stomach.” He took a big bite of spaghetti. “Tell me the weirdest thing you’ve ever found up a dude’s ass.”

She laughed and launched into the story of a plastic Buddha statue that unfortunately for the erotic adventurer, had turned out to be both hollow and brittle.

He shared stories of his family, including cute pictures of his brother’s kids. His mom had moved to Starling City to be closer to her grandchildren, which was why Cisco was the only family member left in Central City to look after Luna.

“Is it hard, being so far away?” she asked.

“Mmmm, hard to say,” he said, drizzling syrup over his waffles. She’d side-eyed him, but he’d insisted that breakfast for dinner was the best ever. “Sometimes. But we never exactly were best buds, so in some ways this works for us. We text each other when we’ve got something to say, and I get to be cool Uncle Cisco on Skype for the kids, sending awesome presents, and - ” He shrugged. “It’s better than when we were growing up. I feel bad about it sometimes, though.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I mean. He’s my brother. I’m supposed to love him and stuff.”

She mushed her fork into the little mountain of mashed potatoes she’d gotten with her meatloaf. “I think that when it comes to family, we mistake loving somebody for liking them,” she said slowly. “I mean, it’s possible to love someone and care what happens to them, and not really want to spend time with them.”

He studied her, his eyes altogether too sharp. “That sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”

“My mom,” she said. “She’s - we’ve always been - I mean, I love her. If she ever needed me, I would go. She’s my mom. But I recently gave myself permission to stop working so hard to like her, and to stop trying to make our relationship something it’s never going to be.”

He mouthed the words - _gave myself permission._ “You’re pretty smart, aren’t you?”

She shrugged and scooped up a heavy forkful of potato. “Or maybe I’m just a cold person.”

“Nope,” he said. “I’ve seen you with your grandma. You’re not cold.”

She ducked her head shyly. “Listen, if you want to be closer to your brother, then it’s worth trying. But if you’re both okay with the way things are now, then … Then that can be okay.”

He pushed a bite of waffle through the puddle of syrup on his plate and looked thoughtful.

Another day, after he told her a few dating disaster stories, she found herself sharing her catastrophic romantic history. He listened and let out a low whistle. “So hang on, first you lost your high school sweetheart in a car accident, and then your college boyfriend turned out to be a psycho who practically kidnapped you to keep you from going away to med school?”

“He was a mistake on many levels.”

“Yeah, no shit. And then - ?”

She shrugged. “Julian was . . . Well, I wasn’t head over heels for him, but that was actually nice after Jay and his whole whirlwind romance thing. And I sort of felt like it was about time to have a boyfriend again, you know?”

He hummed in his throat, dripping more cream into his third cup of coffee. “Were you worried about getting stuck on what Jay did to you, and never trusting a guy ever again?”

Caitlin went still, her grilled cheese sandwich halfway to her mouth. “You know,” she said. “I think I was.”

She studied Cisco, wondering how he’d so quickly and easily picked up on something she hadn’t even been aware of herself.

He raised his brows at her and stirred his coffee.

She shook herself and continued the story. “Anyway, with Julian, we both realized that we wanted different things.” She made a face. “He wanted to propose to me on my birthday with the Jumbotron at an Atoms game, and I wanted to be single.”

“Oh,” he said, dropping an entire sugar packet, unopened, into his coffee cup. “Oh, damn. That was you.”

She clapped her hands over her mouth. “You saw that video?” It had gone viral for a very bad week and a half.

“Yep,” he said, using his fork to fish the soggy sugar packet out of his coffee. “Man, I remember feeling so bad for both of you.”

“He was nice,” she tried to explain. “Just not for me. And it’s amazing how that can be just as wrenching as the other ways things ended.”

“So have you sworn off love now?”

She shook her head. “I focused on my residency after that, but someday I’ll start dating again. Only when I find someone I really, really like, though. No more boyfriends just for the sake of not being alone.”

He nodded a few times. “I, um. I respect that, Caitlin. I really do.”

It was a strange response, she thought, and opened her mouth to ask him why he’d said it like that.

But he twisted away, flagging their waitress down. “Hey, can we get another cup of mayo for my friend here?”

* * *

The day Charlotte and Luna got in a squabbling match that they almost had to get the nurses break up, Caitlin said, “Nothing’s working.”

“Nope,” he said, shaking his head over his cheeseburger. “I thought Scrabble was a decent idea but wow, did that backfire.”

“We could lock them in their bathroom until they bury the hatchet.”

“In each other?”

“Grandma Thunderdome,” she sighed, cutting into her pancakes.

“Two grandmas enter, but only one can leave,” he agreed. “What about a get-along shirt?”

“From what I hear, that doesn’t even work on actual six-year-olds.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “The more I think about it, the more I think it’s gonna take something drastic.”

* * *

The next time their visits coincided, Luna and Charlotte seemed to be especially snappish and petty with each other. Luna sniped about Charlotte taking the last slice of pound cake at dinner. Charlotte sniped back that there was nothing to whine about, there had been plenty of ice cream.

“Oh my god!” Cisco yelled, making them all jump. “Would you two knock it off already?”

“Mijo, did you hear - ”

“I don’t care!” Cisco said fiercely. “I don’t care what she said, I don’t care what you said. Caitlin and I are sick of all our dates starting with 'I’m so sorry about the way my grandma’s acting!’ Would you cut it out?”

Caitlin felt like a pit had opened up beneath her feet. Cisco’s eyes went wide, as if he’d just realized what he’d said.

“Dates?” Luna said.

_“Dates?”_ Charlotte said.

Then, in perfect unison, they both turned their heads to look at Caitlin.

“Mija, are you dating my grandson?” Luna asked her.

She met Cisco’s eyes. They were still wide and astonished, but there was something in them. A plea.

Drastic, he’d said. Well, this was drastic, all right.

She swallowed. “Yes.” She got up, on legs that wobbled like a new fawn’s, and crossed the room to take Cisco’s hand in hers. It closed tightly around hers. She felt herself steady. “Yes, we’re dating. And we didn’t want to tell you because we didn’t want it to become some ridiculous Romeo and Juliet scenario.”

Cisco picked up where she’d left off. “But you know what? We’re all adults here, and you guys can deal. I’m sorry for yelling, Nana and Mrs. S. But Caitlin’s my girlfriend, and I want to enjoy that without worrying about what kind of crap you two are talking about each other.”

It was Charlotte who asked, “Darling, are you serious about him?”

She swallowed. “I - I don’t know,” she said. “It’s early yet. But I do know that - ” She looked over at Cisco. “That I always look forward to seeing him, and no matter what, the time we spend together is the high point of my day.”

Cisco’s lips curved in a slow, sweet smile, and she smiled back. Her legs felt wobbly again.

She turned back to the two old ladies, still sitting in their beds gaping at her. “Which is why we’re asking you - ”

“We’re _begging_ you,” Cisco said.

“Please, if you love us, figure out some way of getting along before we come back next time.”

There was a little silence. Finally, Charlotte said, “Well. I suppose I could make an effort.”

Luna sniffed. “I’ll do my best.”

“That’s all we’re asking,” Cisco said. “And on that note, I think it’s time for us to go.”

“Do you have to?”

“I think so, yes,” Caitlin said, reaching out to grab her coat and purse. She had to let go of Cisco’s hand, and her own felt cold and lonely without his wrapped around it. She kissed her grandmother goodbye and followed Cisco out the door.

They stepped into the elevator at the end of the hall. Instead of hitting the button for the ground floor, they both leaned against the walls and stared at each other, gobsmacked by what they’d just done.

“Well, it did work,” she said after several moments. “Sort of. They certainly weren’t fighting anymore.”

“Because they both practically had strokes from the shock.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” she begged.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know how that happened,” he said, eyes closed. “I - my tongue slipped, and then all of a sudden - ” He opened his eyes. “You’re a champion, Caitlin, for real. You rolled with it so well. And what you said - that was perfect. Like, that was so much more believable than if you’d gone, 'oh yeah, we’re totally in love and running away to Vegas.’”

She managed a shaky smile. “I’m not exactly the getting-married-in-Vegas type. Which my grandmother knows.”

He laughed a little, a high-pitched sound.

The elevator jerked and starting rolling downward, and they both realized where they were. Cisco reached over and hit the ground-floor button, but they still had to wait for an old man to get on at the fourth floor. Caitlin smiled politely at him and wished him at the ends of the earth. He got off at the third floor, which was far enough.

“So what do we do now?” she asked Cisco, worrying at one of the cuffs of her coat.

He let out his breath in a whoosh. “I - uh. Well, I guess we could pretend break up.”

Her throat knotted up, for some reason. “Right now? Right away?” She swallowed the knot down. “That just seems like an invitation to more battling.”

“Oh, man, you’re right, and this time they’ll have righteous indignation on their side. Okay. So.” He folded his hands on top of his head a moment, then dropped them with a deep sigh. “We, uh, we’ll hold hands a lot, I guess? And make up stories about our dates. And stuff. I don’t know. Pretend to be crazy in love in front of our grandmas for the next couple of months.”

“Yeah,” she said as the elevator dinged for the lobby. “We’ll think of things.”

They were suddenly as awkward as they’d been that first day, walking out to the parking lot together in silence. Worse, she thought.

Instead of hooking a right, toward the diner, he turned left, toward his car.

“You’re going?” she said. Her own voice sounded wistful and sad in her ears. “You don’t want to get dinner?”

“I forgot to tell you,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “I have a thing tonight. So I gotta - ” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “You know. Take off.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said.

She mustered up her courage. “Before you go, can I ask you a question?”

He eyed her. “Sure,” he sad cautiously.

“You said your tongue slipped. Why did it slip in that particular direction?”

He shut his eyes and mumbled, “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that.”

“Well?”

He met her eyes again. “Hey. Look. It was a mistake. I was annoyed and I said something I didn’t mean to say and - ” He shrugged. “Let’s forget about it. I mean, as much as possible considering it’s gotten us into a whole mess of trouble.”

She considered him. Her heart was beating very fast in her throat. “All those times we went to dinner, were you - Um. Were you thinking of those as dates?”

He let out his breath. “Honestly? I was starting to. But you were very upfront with me, which I appreciate. You don’t want to date anyone right now. That’s cool.” He dug around in his pocket for his keys. “So, yeah, I’ll text you, okay?” He started for his car again.

She said, loudly and clearly, “What I said was that I didn’t want to date anyone until I found someone I really, really liked.”

He stopped and turned. “I - ”

“I really, really like you.”

His mouth fell open just a little. “I - ” He blinked. “I’m confused?”

“That wasn’t meant as a brush off. That’s what I’ve been saying ever since I broke up with Julian, to explain to people why I wasn’t dating. It just comes out on automatic now. And what I said upstairs? The reason it sounded so good was because it was true. Every word. You really are the high point of my day.” She took in his slow-dawning smile and felt her heart begin to beat normally again. “Of my entire week, actually.”

His hand reached out and wrapped around hers. “Mine too.”

She let her breath and smiled at him. “So we can pretend to date to fool our grandmas. If you want. Or - or we could - ”

“Really date?” he filled in.

“What do you think?”

He tugged at her hands until she stepped toward him, and then he kissed her. She leaned into the kiss, luxuriating in it. Her last kiss had been a long time ago, but she didn’t think that was why this felt so incredibly good.

When they pulled apart again, he said as if there’d been no interim, “I think it’s an awesome idea, but are you sure? This isn’t just for your grandma?”

“I love her very much, but if I were in the habit of dating people just to make her happy, I would have gone to Lily Stein’s bat mitzvah with her best friend’s great-nephew. I didn’t,” she added. “This is for me. For us."

“Us,” he said. “I like that.”

She felt the smile spread over her face, and she leaned in to kiss him again. “Me too.”

* * *

Upstairs, at the window overlooking the parking lot, Charlotte reported, “They’re still kissing.”

Luna chortled, shuffling cards like a Vegas card shark. “If he’s anything like his grandfather, your granddaughter is verrrrrry happy.”

Charlotte smirked at her roommate. “If she’s anything like me, your grandson’s very happy.”

Luna swatted at her. “Ayyyy, sucia!”

The other woman laughed raucously and turned away from the window, settling down onto the end of Luna’s bed. “Well, it took them long enough to admit it,” she said, holding out a hand for the cards Luna passed to her.

Luna sniffed. “As if we couldn’t figure out they always wanted to visit us on the same day, and they spent half the time talking to each other, and their cars stayed in the parking lot for hours after they left.”

“We may be old but we’re not stupid.” Charlotte surveyed her hand, discarded two, and drew their replacements.

Luna discarded one and drew. “And you doubted me.” She reached over to the bag of M&Ms Cisco had brought and tossed four candies onto her lap tray.

“I didn’t doubt you, Luna, I just thought your plan was awfully convoluted.” Charlotte saw her four and raised her five more, absently eating a few candies. Cisco kept them both well-supplied.

Luna rolled her eyes. “If we tried to set them up, they would both fuss and kick their heels. But give them a common goal, let them think it was all their own idea, and - ” She pointed out the window. “Look at that. Married in two years, I bet you.”

“A year and a half,” Charlotte said.

“And you had fun, didn’t you?”

“Almost as much fun as you did. I still don’t know half the names you called me in Spanish.”              

“I’ll teach you.” Luna studied the pot and then her hand, eyes narrowed. “Do you fold?”

“Not on your life,” Charlotte said, and spread her cards out.

They had seven aces between them, but Charlotte had the higher hand anyway. She raked in her stash of candy. “My deal.”

“Before that, come over here,” Luna ordered. “Triumph selfie.”

“Oh, Luna!”

“Come on, come on! The hell with your wrinkles, you’ve earned them. Don’t you want your great-grandbabies to know how beautiful their nanas were?”

Charlotte pushed herself up from the end of the bed and went around to press her cheek to Luna’s. “They’re going to see for themselves,” she said, and smiled for the camera.

FINIS


End file.
